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Keyboardist/songwriter Paul Tucker and singer/songwriter Tunde Baiyewu are the Lighthouse Family. Although their debut album "Ocean Drive" (Wildcard/Polydor) received raving reviews when released by the end of 1995, this British duo first came into prominence this year via the re-release of their second single "Lifted". It went straight to number four on the U.K. chart, the highest new entry the week of release and due to this, the album's been re-released as well. I caught up with the pleasant and extremely talkative Paul when he and Tunde were in Stockholm on a promotional visit in April. How come people have discovered Lighthouse Family just recently? -Well, "Lifted" was a Blues
& Soul record of the week the first time it came out in May -95. It was a big hit in
the Describe the music of Lighthouse Family. Is it Soul or is it Pop?
-That's a good shout! Des'ree and Seal, they're very friendly, very fresh. They're not too "soul-ey" but they both very good singers. The difference between the Lighthouse Family and Des'ree and Seal are that they're both very introspective and sometimes quite melancholic and sad. Our stuff comes out on the optimistic side. And Seals' first album was more of a Rock record. But they're very talented people and I consider them to be some of the best things about British Pop music at the moment. That to the Americans is "Brit-Pop". Des'ree, Seal, Sade, Simply Red, that's the Lighthouse Family's territory. Has "Ocean Drive" been released in the States yet? -It's only out on import, but it's going very, very well over there. We're going to the States later this year but we want to build the foundations properly in the U. K. and Europe first. Obviously people in the States read British music press and they hear about stuff and wanna know what it is. When they hear that "Lifted" is number one on British radio they wanna know what the song is, you know? In the clubs in New York, Los Angeles and particularly in Miami, "Ocean Drive" is quite a popular record, but as you know, the States is a lot more fragmented, so we wanna spend time on touring the States properly, going to radio, press, doing live shows and devoting a large amount of time to it. Our plan for this year is to tour the U.K. until the end of June and then we're gonna record our second album in July and August. After that we will be going on an European tour in September and October, so we'll most likely go to the States like the back end of October, November and December.
-What Linslee's virtually done is kinda take "Lifted" into Gap Band/Roger Troutman territory. That's the flavour of U.K. street Soul at the moment. The album cuts, the straight single cuts, those are the records that myself and Tunde makes on our own. That's our style, that's all we do. We can't copy somebody else's style and that "Lifted" remix is Linslee's style, but something we are into because it's groovy. If you listen to the Linslee version, it's really smokin', it's really hot, much more straight R & B than what me and Tunde do. Our sound is more melodic and has a more classic Soul sound than Linslee's. We wanted to make something timeless, that will stand the test. I'm sure that Linslee's remixes are classics in their own right, but what me and Tunde are into is a kind of landscaped sound, things that create pictures in your mind. You can't always be where you wanna be, so music takes you away from it all from a bit, doesn't it? I think that's what music's all about. So who is Linslee?
Tell me a little bit about your backgrounds.
-It's corny and cheesy, but I've loved music since I was a kid. I used to listen to my dad's records and he was into Pink Floyd and The Doors, Stevie Wonder.. A good mixture of R & B and more rocky style, I'd say. I began playing guitar in different bands with friends and then I played bass for a bit as well, then keyboards. I don't have a classical training or anything, I just knew what I liked and what I didn't like. I wrote my first songs around 85/86. I think you gotta be hard on yourself if you're gonna do this for a living. You have to be brutal, always try to improve what you do. In the beginning I used to throw things out instead of trying to change them and just move on and I'm still like that. If I don't like something I won't try to make it work, I can't be bothered with it. If I don' t like the initial idea then I'm not prepared to put the effort and the energy into developing it. Then it's better to just throw it away and start on something new. How did you and Tunde meet and when did you start working together? -What happened was that this mutual
friend, a DJ named Wayne McDonald, was doing something involving music and recording
technology at college. He'd heard "Tund" singing on top of a record and he
thought "he sounds like he's got an all right voice, I'll get him into According to my dictionary a lighthouse is "a tower with a light on the top to direct seamen at night". How did you come up with the name Lighthouse Family and what does it mean to you? -I wanted a name that was friendly. Something that would get across the idea that we were Soul, which is the family part and I think a lighthouse is a friendly thing. I also wanted something that would get across the darker side, something a little bit moodier as well. And lighthouses only work at nighttime anyway, so..(laughs). The other thing of course is that I'm really into the sea. I like going down to the coast and sitting down on the beach. It's that sort of "no-socks-on-the-beach-aspect" of what we do and it's taken care of with the name Lighthouse Family too. Once you have chosen a name, you forget about the name and get on with your songs. But it's definitely got a life of it's own. We know what is a Lighthouse Family song, a Lighthouse Family lyric and what isn't.. And Mike Peden (of The Chimes fame) who produced the album, was he a "Lighthouse" Producer?
What people were involved in the songwriting on "Ocean Drive"? -We collaborated with Tim Kellett (once a member of Simply Red), Tim Lawes (best known for the work he's done with Gabrielle), Martin Brammer (who used to be in The Kane Gang) and Alan Glass. He's an American who's worked with George Benson and Anita Baker. Then we did two songs with Junior.
-Yeah! Junior's a good lad! Did you ever hear that splendid song he had out a few years ago called "Morning Will Come" on MCA? He has his own label now. Junior's one of those people that has flashes of brilliance. We worked with him on "What Could Be Better" and "Keep Remembering". His role was more of a catalyst, he was a good guy to bounce ideas off, so he doesn't actually perform on the record. He was a really good input and he's just such a sweet guy. Since you obviously know the history of Brit-Soul you're probably interested to know that David Grant and Steven Dante are doing background vocals. Tell me about the musicians on the album. -We have Pete Wingfield, who played
piano in The Chimes and Frank Ricotti on vibes, Frank used to be in The Chimes as well.
Danny Cummings plays percussion and he's coming out with us live too. Then there's Phil
Todd on flute and brass, Tim Kellett on trumpet and flugelhorn and Simon Eyre and David
Brewis on guitars. On the album, Rupert Brown played drums, but our live drummer is Trevor
Morrell and he's previously worked with Sade. |
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April 1996 Interview | November 1996 Interview | Discography |
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© Maria Granditsky
April 1996. |
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-I think it's a
bit of both, actually. It's Soul music, but not in the strict sense. What we do has got a
lot of the best elements of Soul in it, but if think about what Soul music is about today
where sex is very high on the agenda..I mean, most often it's about relationships or sex,
all the way through, nose to tail and frankly it can be quite boring. So we try and be a
bit more diverse than that. We're doing Soul that's simply drawn from life. I don't really
like the expression "Pop music" because it sounds plastic to me. People talk
about "Brit-Pop" and I think our record is more like British Pop music at the
moment than "Brit-Pop" is. "Brit-Pop" isn't pop at all, it's bloody
Rock! On our album there's a lot of what I suppose you could call Pop music in the sense
of it being popular, music for ordinary people about ordinary things that you come across
in your everyday life. 
Your style has been compared to artists such as Des'ree
and Seal. How do you feel about that?
The
remix of "Lifted" is miles away from the album version. How do you feel about
it?
-I'll tell you who he is. He's a big, fat, black
bassplayer from Birmingham and he's a real funkateer, if you know what I mean
(laughs). He started out remixing on our stuff and since then he's done things for Soul
IV Real and 3T, among others. (Linslee's last name is Campbell and he has remixed
things for Brit-soul quartet Nu Colors, Peace By Piece, plus the Lighthouse Family's
"Goodbye Heartbreak" single). 
-Tunde was born in London.
His dad was a structural engineer and he died when Tunde was about five, so Tunde moved to
Nigeria, a country which has long historic links with England. Then he came back to
England at fifteen and went to college in Newcastle. I was born in London as well, around
the same time. I lived there until I was about five. I moved to Cambridge for a few years
and then I went from there to college in Newcastle. I studied French and German, so I
lived in Paris and in Berlin for a year each, before I went back to Newcastle. I moved
about and traveled quite a lot in Europe, while Tunde spent most of his time in Nigeria,
so my thing is European and his is more African. But we're very similar anyway. We're very
different in some respects, but musically we want to do the same things and we roughly
like and dislike the same things. He's more intuitive, more natural than I am, I suppose.
I'm always trying to get the next thing done, he's much more laid-back. That's one of the
great things about him. I mean, when I first kicked off with him he didn't even wanna be a
singer, he didn't think he could sing. Some other people who thought of themselves as
singers only wanted to be stars, see their name up in lights. He just came into the studio
and seemed very relaxed and friendly.
When did you get
bitten by the music bug?
doing some of my
work at college". Wayne was also trying to get a record label going on his own. I was
looking for someone to sing "Ocean Drive" and as I said earlier, I didn't want
somebody who wanted to be a star and was overdoing it, so I was cautious. Wayne played me
some stuff that Tunde had sung . I thought it was second division Soul, really horrible,
but you could tell Tunde's voice was really cool and I tried to imagine in my head what it
would sound like if I were to put that voice together with "Ocean Drive". When
Tunde first heard "Ocean Drive" he was into it straight away so we got together
in the studio, recorded that one and then we moved on and started working together. Tunde
started writing when he began working with me. Before that he wasn't writing anything.
Often what would happen was that he'd put in vocal melodies of his own and I'd hear a song
in what he was singing.
-He was the right
producer for that album but we're probably not gonna use him on our next album simply
because we want to move on. We've started recording this week with Arabella Rodriguez who
engineered "Back To Life" and "Keep On Movin' " for Soul II Soul.
She's really great and what's nice about her is that she's got that kind of contemporary
thing but at the same time always has a connection with us. One of the things about Mike
is that he's a producer and he's got his head on the block. He wasn't connecting with us
at an emotional level always and of course there was some amount of friction when he
wanted to do it one way and me and Tunde another. Out of that creative friction we got a
good result. But that was that album and we wanna make another album, a different album, a
better album and I don't see how working with Mike again will do that. We loved that
album, I'm not saying we didn't.
Since Lighthouse Family are new kids on
the block, whereas Junior Giscombe's a true veteran in Brit-Soul, did he have any good
advice to share? 